Burns are one of the leading causes of morbidity worldwide and the most costly traumatic injuries. A better understanding of the molecular mechanisms in wound healing is required to accelerate tissue recovery and reduce the health economic impact. However, the standard techniques used to evaluate the biological events associated to wound repair are laborious, time-consuming, and/or require multiple assays/staining. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the feasibility of Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy to monitor the progress and healing status of burn wounds. Burn injuries were induced on Wistar rats by water vapor exposure and biopsied for further histopathological and spectroscopic evaluation at four time-points (3, 7, 14, and 21 days). Spectral data were preprocessed and compared by principal component analysis. Pairwise comparison of post-burn groups to each other revealed that metabolic activity induced by thermal injury decreases as the healing progresses. Higher amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids were evidenced on days 3 and 7 compared to healthy skin and reduced amounts of these molecular structural units on days 14 and 21 post-burn. FT-IR spectroscopy was used to determine the healing status of a wound based on the biochemical information retained by spectral signatures in each phase of healing. Our findings demonstrate that FT-IR spectroscopy can monitor the biological events triggered by burn trauma as well as to detect the wound status including full recovery based on the spectral changes associated to the biochemical events in each phase.

中文翻译：

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使用红外光谱监测烧伤伤口的进展和愈合状态

烧伤是世界范围内发病的主要原因之一，也是最昂贵的外伤。需要更好地了解伤口愈合的分子机制，以加速组织恢复并减少对健康经济的影响。然而，用于评估与伤口修复相关的生物事件的标准技术费力、费时和/或需要多次检测/染色。因此，本研究旨在评估傅里叶变换红外 (FT-IR) 光谱监测烧伤进展和愈合状态的可行性。通过水蒸气暴露对 Wistar 大鼠造成烧伤，并在四个时间点（3、7、14 和 21 天）进行活检以进行进一步的组织病理学和光谱学评估。通过主成分分析对光谱数据进行预处理和比较。烧伤后组之间的成对比较显示，热损伤引起的代谢活动随着愈合的进行而降低。与健康皮肤相比，第 3 天和第 7 天的碳水化合物、蛋白质、脂质和核酸含量更高，并且在烧伤后第 14 天和第 21 天这些分子结构单元的数量减少。FT-IR 光谱用于根据每个愈合阶段的光谱特征保留的生化信息来确定伤口的愈合状态。我们的研究结果表明，FT-IR 光谱可以监测由烧伤引发的生物事件，并根据与每个阶段的生化事件相关的光谱变化来检测伤口状态，包括完全恢复。